A sign out in front of the 315 West Ponce de Leon Ave. office building – aka Decatur Court – announces three upcoming city meetings to consider a parking variance for the site.

The last time the developer – Easlan Capital – requested a parking variance for this site to build multi-family residential at the rear of the site and retail along West Ponce de Leon Ave, it resulted months of negotiation between the surrounding neighborhood, the developer, and the city.  In the course of negotiations, the retail building facing West Ponce was dropped to appease neighborhood worries that a retail building would result in more parking along residential streets and increased traffic through the neighborhood.  The plan for the apartments in the rear and a parking deck were ultimately approved by the city commission on December 15th, 2008.

The whole process was covered extensively on this site back then.

Now it looks like the developer is looking to bring back the retail portion of their plan and needs a variance of 59 parking spaces (401 vs. 459) to move ahead with construction.  The developer’s letter requesting the variance says that the new building would have 9,000 square feet of restaurant and 7,900 square feet of retail space.  The building would comply with the 35 foot height restriction of the site and give restaurants the option of rooftop dining.

The letter to the city employs the same argument that was used back in 2008 in requesting the variance:  basically that the retail/restaurant building and the existing office building require the greatest number of parking spaces at different times of day – the retail/restaurant in the evening, office during the day.  Therefore, parking space would theoretically be shared resulting in a need for fewer total spots.

As for next steps:  There are four upcoming meetings regarding this potential development.

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